Dawes Giro 300 Review

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Dawes Bicycles have a good name in the UK for building high quality road bikes, mountain bikes and touring bikes. In recent years they have also introduced hybrids and heritage bikes. In fact Dawes make all sorts of bicycles including children’s bikes and BMX. They even make most of their most popular bicycles in male and female versions.

The first problem I encountered with Dawes was getting a brochure of their products. To do this you need to complete a form on their website and wait for it to arrive in the post. This took quite a long time and I thought that I had made mistake and completed the form again. Sure enough a few days later the brochure arrived, followed a few days later by another one!

The brochure contains glossy images of most of Dawes product range. This particular brochure (2008) is actually a large fold-out sheet of paper. There is very little information about each bicycle in the brochure and consequently little to learn from the product brochure that is not available on the internet already.

The second problem that I encountered in getting a Dawes Giro 300 was finding one! The days when bicycles were diligently hand crafted by skilled bicycle mechanics in their country of origin are long gone. I’m not sure if any bicycles are still manufactured in the United Kingdom. Perhaps one or two very small specialized bicycle manufacturers still persist. This is a great shame but sadly, the majority of our bicycles are now shipped by container from foreign shores. An example of this is that my Dawes Giro 300 was built in Cambodia (according to the packaging).

This type of manufacturing means that products are imported in batches. This means that products can go out of stock for large periods of time. This is what happened with the Dawes Giro bicycles at the end of summer 2008. This was frustrating but understandable, made worse by internet retailer claiming to have stock when they clearly did not have any. I recommend ringing and checking before placing an order with internet retailers. In the end I rang Dawes directly and they were very helpful indeed, or perhaps it just seemed that way because by chance it was the day that they had just come into stock. My local bike shop had already informed me that the bicycle were back in stock.

It was December when I actually got my hands on my Dawes Giro 300 for the first time. In the end I bought it through an internet retailer who was able to supply the cycle much cheaper than my local bike shop. I would usually have preferred to use my local bike shop but I live in a remote area and they do not offer a delivery service. It would have been beneficial to have had the bicycle set-up by the bike shop in advance.

My first impression of the Dawes Giro 300 is that it looks fantastic. It has a very elegant red paint finish. I examined it very closely and found no defects, scratches or blemishes in the finish. I only had to make a couple of slight adjustments to the bicycles original setup and it was ready to ride. If you buy the bicycle on the internet you have to complete the assembly at home. This is a simple task of putting on the front wheel, seat post and saddle and handlebars. The gears and brakes on my bicycle needed some very slight adjustments.

My first ride on the Dawes Giro 300 was just a quick “test ride” down the street where I live. I travelled approximately 1 mile and found that the front derailuer was not working properly. So I returned home and made some adjustment to it which involved altering the angle slightly and re-setting the tension on the cable. After these small tinkering sessions I test rode the bicycle again and it was excellent. It is just a fantastic “entry level” road bike in my opinion. It may not have the bells and whistles (actually you do get a bell – I didn’t bother fitting it though) that higher end road bikes have but it ranks above most other basic racers on the market. This is why I went to such lengths to acquire this particular bicycle. It is absolutely perfect for the casual cyclist that wants to cruise around on a fairly decent bike without spending a fortune.

There are a few negative aspects of this bicycle that I have discovered in the short time that I have owned it. One of the problems is the cheap and cheerful black plastic pedals that come with the bicycle. They look like they would be better suited to a child’s bike or supermarket MTB. I was very surprised that it shipped with these inadequate components and will upgrade them as soon as possible. Dawes has written their name on every conceivable component that they can fit their name on. In addition almost every component and the frame have Dawes logo plastered all over it. I’m not bothered about this because it looks really smart. I just feel slightly annoyed that the one place where a really good Dawes logo should be is on the front of the frame (headset). In the old days bicycles had metal logo badges that were fixed on with rivets. Dawes have slapped on a foam sticker that is already beginning to peel off. Some of these very cheap money saving exploits spoil the overall image of a very good bicycle.

The fact is that the Dawes Giro 300 is a very good racing bicycle. It is fast and furious and that is all that matters when you are infected with the road cycling bug. Please read my next post about Cycle Clothing

Jimmy Riddle